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04 May 2012

May Ancestors

For the sake of brief entries, I am
not footnoting the facts in

this ongoing memorial. Sources have been
noted either in other blog posts or in my family history books.

4
May 1934 William Charles Dougall died
in Vancouver at the home of his daughter Mabel (Dougall) Jaeger. Will
apparently trained in his father's blacksmithing trade which later
became a carriage-building business in Renfrew, Ontario. He followed
his older brother John Fraser west to Winnipeg where they established
their own carriage making business; perhaps brother Thomas was also
initially involved. It is said the tragic death of his brother John
Fraser in 1916, and business irregularities, affected him deeply for
the rest of his life. He may have been prone to depression from then
on. One of Will’s hobbies was making rustic furniture. He and his
wife Jessie Isabella (Belle) McFadyen moved to the west coast in
1920. After Belle died in 1927, Will lived on a small farm in
Whonnock, British Columbia. He is buried in Ocean View Burial Park,
Burnaby, BC. Will was the grandfather I never knew.

13 May
1810 John Dougall (“Dougald”) of West Calder, Edinburghshire
(later Midlothian), Scotland, son of Thomas Dougall and Marion
Pollons, married Marion Hastie of Whitburn, Linlithgowshire (later
West Lothian), daughter of John Hastie and Margaret Brown, at
Whitburn parish. There is an apocryphal family story that Marion,
daughter of a landed tenant, was engaged to be married to a young man
of suitable means. The man broke the engagement to marry someone else
and Marion rebounded to marry John Dougall, “a humble but
god-fearing” man. We often hear variations of stories like this,
where one party married (or eloped) beneath their class. After their
oldest son Thomas sent encouraging words of life in Canada, and their
second son John died of injuries from a horse, the couple emigrated
to Quebec. They were my great-great-grandparents (photograph at this blog post).

16 May
1869 Margery (McIntyre) Fraser died on this date at St. Andrews
East, Quebec (aka St-André
Est). Her death is recorded in St. Andrews Presbyterian church
register, although no marker exists in the cemetery (nor for her
husband John Fraser). I have not been able to determine her
whereabouts in the 1861 Canadian census. I know she was born in
Scotland ca.1786, but her family and origins are still a mystery. A
working hypothesis is that she came to Canada with a married, older
sister, Catherine (McIntyre) Cameron. Margery was my
great-great-great-grandmother.